Bus Kills Teacher Near Northwest Side School

March 20, 1985|By Philip Wattley and Jean Davidson.

Police were seeking parental permission to interview about 25 children who were aboard a school bus Tuesday morning when it struck and killed a Chicago schoolteacher as she walked to a Northwest Side elementary school.

The youngsters might have seen the accident, said Lt. James Carroll, commander of the Police Department`s major traffic unit.

Teacher Linda Anderson, 38, a full-time substitute at Scammon Elementary School, 4201 W. Henderson St., apparently was starting to cross the street when she was struck by the right rear wheels of the bus as it turned north onto Keeler Avenue from School Street, according to Carroll. Anderson, of the Northwest Side, was dead on arrival at Northwest Hospital.

Betty Dixon, 34, of 2834 W. Warren Blvd., driver of the Spears Transportation Inc. bus, was ticketed for failure to yield due caution to a pedestrian. Company officials said Dixon, who was hired after completing a bus driver training course in October, had a good driving record.

``The driver was straightening out from the turn when she felt a bump at the rear,`` said Raymond Skawski, vice president of Spears, 5000 W. Flournoy St. ``She said she checked the mirrors and thought she hit a dog. When she checked further, . . . she radioed in and we called the Fire Department for an ambulance.``

The children aboard the bus, which was bound for Disney Magnet School, 4140 N. Marine Dr., were transferred to another bus and proceeded to school, Skawski said.

Anderson apparently had taken a Chicago Transit Authority bus to Pulaski Road and then walked toward Scammon, where she had been teaching since March 6.

Scammon Principal William J. Whalen said he ran into the street with blankets after he learned that someone had been struck.

``At about 8 a.m. a neighbor ran into the school and said that a woman had been hit by a bus and was lying in the street,`` Whalen said. ``When we got to the street, we realized it was one of our teachers.``

Anderson, who replaced a Scammon teacher on leave of absence, ``enjoyed the youngsters and was liked by everyone,`` Whalen said.

Anderson, who was divorced, had a 13-year-old daughter, Aimee,

Before her assignment at Scammon, Anderson taught for about three months at Lowell Elementary School, 3320 W. Hirsch St. She also attended night classes at Northeastern Illinois University to work toward a family counseling degree.

She began substitute work in the Chicago public school system after graduating from Northern University in 1968 but left for more than a decade before returning to public school classrooms last fall, according to school spokesman Bob Saigh. In between she taught at St. Ferdinand Catholic Elementary School, 3131 N. Mason Ave., and in schools in Hawaii and Denver.

While teaching in Hawaii, Anderson worked with troubled children of military families, according to her mother, Vera Anderson. Upon returning to Chicago in 1973, she counseled drug and alcohol abusers at Forkosh Memorial Hospital.

``She loved children and they loved her,`` her mother said. ``Even though she said counseling families was her aim, I thought she would be a teacher all of her life.``